Moving old iphoto library to photostream

I have an old iphoto library on an old Mac running Leopard and want to move it to iCloud, if possible. How do I do that?

It's not possible for a numbr of reasons. To access iCloud you need iPhoto 11 and 10.7 minimum. Plus that's not what iCloud is.
http://www.apple.com/icloud/

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HT5037 Difficulty moving old iPhoto library from 2008 (not sure which version of iPhoto it is) to new macbook pro running OSX Mavericks.

I tried downloading AND RUNNING the upgrader and I'm stuck in an infinite loop. After running the upgrader from the utilities folder, it looks like things are working. Then a window pops up asking me to launch iphoto to complete the upgrade. After launching iphoto, iphoto goes back to the original error message that I need to download the upgrader.
I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the upgrader multiple times to no avail. I've also tried dragging my iphoto library from the external hard drive it is housed on to many different areas before trying to launch the upgrader, none of them worked. The external hard drive format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I also tried dragging the iphoto library folder in the pictures file onto my new Macbook right next to my new iphoto library folder. This allowed me to open up iphoto (Yay!) but of course, none of the photos from my old iphoto library were in their, even when the old library was selected.
I've read what seems like hundreds of posts on this same issue, but can't seem to find a solution that works for me. I want to simply transfer my iphoto library from an external hard drive (my old macbook just crashed, so this is the only option) to my new macbook, keeping the albums, slideshows, and organization intact.
I would appreciate any help or feedback. Thank you in advance for reading this!

Option 1
Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.
If that fails:
Option 2
Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In early versions of Library Manager it's the File -> Rebuild command. In later versions it's under the Library menu.)
This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, albums and keywords, faces and places back.
Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.
Regards
TD

Moving my old iPhoto library to my new macbook

I recently purchased a new Macbook and did not use Migration Assistant to set it up. I want my iPhoto library moved to my Macbook intact. My old computer is an iMac G4 running OS X 10.4.11. That computer has iPhoto 2.0.1. I dragged my iPhoto Library on to an iPod in disk mode and dragged it from that device onto my new Macbook which is running Snow Leopard and iPhoto '09. I started iPhoto on the Macbook and pointed it to the old iPhoto Library. It started up fine, updated the Library and went through its Faces recognition routine. Super, except that my old machine tells me that my Library holds 4818 images and iPhoto on my new machine counts just 3415 images.
Can someone help me understand the discrepancy and how to rectify? Thank you.

Hello Old Toad:
Thanks for your second response to my photo dilemma--I've been unusually busy the past ten days and haven't been able to try your suggestion. Part of the "busy" was exasperation at Apple over the download of the iPhone upgrade 4.0; I didn't understand all the ramifications of the upgrade and thus lost all the remaining photos on my iPhone except those taken with the iPhone camera. Luckily for me, that numbered over 1100 so all was not lost. I told a friend who has both iPhone and Mac desktop of my inability to download photos from iPhone to laptop, and he said he has been doing it for over two years! I asked him to show me how he does it. We then tried it with my iPhone but were stopped by a message on his desktop saying it could not download photos from my iPhone because I didn't have iTunes 9.2 installed. At home I opened iTunes on my MacBook and found that I did have 9.2 installed. I plugged my iPhone into my computer and to my utter amazement in less than 30 seconds iPhoto opened up and asked if I wanted to download x number of items. That had never happened before, and I don't know why it happened now. Two possibilities come to mind: that iTunes 9.2 was downloaded recently as part of an upgrade bundle and I hadn't tried the photo download SINCE the upgrade--in other words, all I needed was iTunes 9.2? Or, that in the iPhone 4.0 upgrade a mechanism was installed to accomplish the task, but neither explains my friend's success at the same task. If anyone else is as puzzled by this as I am, I'd like to hear about it. Also, why was such a seemingly simple question/task so difficult to find a solution to?
Sincerely,
Medren

I moved my iPhoto library to a external hard drive to free up space on my iMac per instructions, but the library is still on my iMac so I don't have much room left. How do I get rid of the all the contents of my library on my iMac so just on backup drive

As per Apple instructions, I moved my iPhoto library to an external hard drive so that I could free up space on my full iMac. However, I was not told the last step in the process -- How do I get the iPhoto library off my iMac so I free up that memory?

And after deleting the old Library, you should start up iPhoto while holding down the Option key in order to force iPhoto to let you select your iPhoto Library that is on your external hard drive. If you start up iPhoto the usual way, it will just create a new, blank iPhoto Library in your /users/yourusername/Pictures folder on your iMac's internal hard drive.

Confusion about moving my iphoto library to another hard drive.

My startup drive is nearly full and I'd like to my my iPhoto library (I still have iphoto 4) and photos to another internal drive to free up some space. I've found brief help pages on how to do this, but I find them vague and unclear. Do I make an exact copy of the pictures folder on my startup drive on another drive? And then how do I get iPhoto to look there instead?
I'm about to import a whole lot of photos and I"d like to be ablt to view them all without filling up the startup drive.
Is there a detailed instruction page on how to do it? the "1.1.1 moving your iphoto library" info page was not detailed enough for me.

How much "more exact" could you get when you duplicate your iPhoto Library folder?
I'm not sure what source you're relying on, but iPhoto Help describes in pretty clear terms how to 1) move your iPhoto library, 2) how to make multiple iPhoto libraries, and 3) how to switch between iPhoto libraries. Sounds like what you want to do involves 1 & 3.
I guess I don't understand your reference to 1.1.1 when you have iPhoto 4 installed. Drag your iPhoto Library folder to the intended destination, then follow the Help instructions for switching between iPhoto libraries. If all is well, delete the old iPhoto Library folder.

HT204476 is there anyway to get rid of the old iPhoto Library? It defeats the purpose of having a new software if I have to keep the remnants of the older one.

is there anyway to get rid of the old iPhoto Library? It defeats the purpose of having a new software if I have to keep the remnants of the older one.

dubthedankest wrote:
Where are the masters actually stored upon conversion from Aperture to Photos? Photos?
The master files are stored on your drive, but they are not actually stored "in" any folder. Folders are really just special files that store various bits of information about the files associated with that folder, including links to where they actually are stored. That's why you can "move" a file from one folder to another very quickly: all that you really are doing is moving the link & other info from one folder to the other folder, while the file itself stays where it was.
Because of this, it is possible for more than one folder to link to the same file -- in the Finder it looks just like there are two copies of the file, one in each folder, but there really is just the one copy. From the description in the Photos saves disk space by sharing images with your iPhoto or Aperture libraries doc, it looks like that's what happens when you import your iPhoto library into Photos -- both the old iPhoto Library "file" (which actually is a set of folders & subfolders of files) & the Photos Library (also consisting of folders & files) contain links to the master files, but like the Apple doc says, there really is just one set of master files being stored.
This is very similar to the way Time Machine backups look like they have multiple copies of the same unique file, one in each time-stamped backup folder, but there really is only one copy on the Time Machine drive. My guess is Apple is using hard links for this, which means the actual master files will not be deleted from the file system as long as at least one link remains to each of them.
So you should be safe in deleting the old iPhotos Library once you are absolutely sure you don't need it, but to be sure, if it was me I would make a backup just in case, or better yet just leave it alone.

What to do with old iPhoto library after migration to Photos

After migration to Photos my hard drive is maxed out. I want to move the 15gigs old iPhoto library to an external drive to free some space as some have suggested. Others here have said you can just trash the old library. There must be a reason 10.10.3 was designed to retain the iPhoto library. Trash it--really? Another suggestion was to put my 15 gigs on a flash drive. So the question is: does Photos need to be able to see the iPhoto library as it would if on an external drive connected to my Time Machine?

Thanks for your reply but I'm still confused as to how I lost over 10Gigs of HD space after the migration. I understand the conversion is supposed to create more space, not less. When I look in the pictures folder in Finder, I see 2 LIbrarys, iPhoto and Photos, each of them approx 15 Gbs. according to the Get Info menu. I guess what I don't understand is if the iPhotos Library is not needed and is moved to an external drive why that wouldn't free that amount of space.
Also, if "optimization" is supposed to move "some" high res images to the cloud to make room on the HD, how is it that I find myself with only 1gb left on my HD? What is the criteria that triggers "optimization" and how much room can we expect it to shoot for? There seems to be a variety of answers on this subject, many of them sound like guesses. Apple's explanation is vague about how it works, so hopefully someone has the accurate, in depth scoop on this.

Migrating old iPhoto Library to new Mac

Hi,
I recently experienced a hard drive crash on my 5 yr old iMac, so I've purchased a new one instead of repairing and upgrading the old one. I now have a large iPhoto library on a backup drive (drag file copy, not Time Machine, and yes I am using Time Machine now...). Since I started with an older version of iPhoto, I have the Library folder with all the folders visible inside, like the Originals, Modified, etc. I was surprised to see that the iPhoto Library on my new system is a single file. I had hoped to just drag the existing folders to the appropriate location on the new Mac. Barring that, I tried importing the Library from my backup drive into iPhoto '11 on my new system (by just highlighting the Library folder in the import window), and boy what a mess I have now. Most events appear two or three times, with some folders containing all the photos, some containing smaller versions (some type of thumbnails I presume). I had around 25K photos on the old system, now I have over 55K after importing them to the new Mac. After having spent a gajillion hours editing the original photos for dust, color correction, etc, I'm not at all interested in re-doing all this work. I've done some searching but can't find any documentation on moving my old Library to my new iMac. Any suggestions or a good URL would be great.
Thanks
Lou

Never import one Library to another. Every version and thumbnail is imported like a distinct photo, you lose all your Albums, Keywords etc., the link between Original and Previews is destroyed, the non-destructive editing feature is ruined and so on. In summary: it's mess.
In your case I woukd simply start over. Trash that Library on the new machine.
To migrate a Library to a new machine is simple:
Simply copy the iPhoto Library from the Pictures Folder on the old Machine (or in your case, from the Hard Drive) to the Pictures Folder on the new Machine.
Then launch iPhoto. That's it.
This moves photos, events, albums, books, keywords, slideshows and everything else.
I was surprised to see that the iPhoto Library on my new system is a single file.
Since iPhoto 7 (iLife 08) the old iPhoto Library Folder is a Package File. This is simply a folder that looks like a file in the Finder. The change was made to the format of the iPhoto library because many users were inadvertently corrupting their library by browsing through it with other software or making changes in it themselves.
Accessing the files in the Library via the Finder has not been supported on any version of iphoto. As an FYI:
There are many, many ways to access your files in iPhoto: You can use any Open / Attach / Browse dialogue. On the left there's a Media heading, your pics can be accessed there. Command-Click for selecting multiple pics.
(Note the above illustration is not a Finder Window. It's the dialogue you get when you go File -> Open)
You can access the Library from the New Message Window in Mail:
There's a similar option in Outlook and many, many other apps. If you use Apple's Mail, Entourage, AOL or Eudora you can email from within iPhoto.
If you use a Cocoa-based Browser such as Safari, you can drag the pics from the iPhoto Window to the Attach window in the browser.
If you want to access the files with iPhoto not running:
For users of 10.6 and later: You can download a free Services component from MacOSXAutomation which will give you access to the iPhoto Library from your Services Menu.
Using the Services Preference Pane you can even create a keyboard shortcut for it.
For Users of 10.4 and 10.5 Create a Media Browser using Automator (takes about 10 seconds) or use this free utility Karelia iMedia Browser
Other options include:
Drag and Drop: Drag a photo from the iPhoto Window to the desktop, there iPhoto will make a full-sized copy of the pic.
File -> Export: Select the files in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Export. The dialogue will give you various options, including altering the format, naming the files and changing the size. Again, producing a copy.
Show File: a. On iPhoto 09 and earlier: Right- (or Control-) Click on a pic and in the resulting dialogue choose 'Show File'. A Finder window will pop open with the file already selected. 3.b.
b: On iPhoto 11 and later: Select one of the affected photos in the iPhoto Window and go File -> Reveal in Finder -> Original. A Finder window will pop open with the file already selected.

HT1229 Moving my IPhoto library to my external hard drive Seagate 1.5TB

My computer is an IMac late 2006. She's been running really slow and erratic. My IPhoto has over 5K photos which may be the culprit.
I have a Seagate External hard drive with 1.5 TB capacity with very little data stored. I would like to move my IPhoto library to my external hard drive, to improve the performance of my computer. I am unable to locate my external hard drive even though it is connected to the IMac. Can some one help?
Shaiboy48

Suer as long as it is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled)
Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
I am not sure what this mean
I am unable to locate my external hard drive even though it is connected to the IMac
LN

Woah; my first iMovie '08 project ruined by moving my iPhoto library?

So I made my first project with the new iMovie last night (I actually like it a lot more for making quick movies, but will probably need final cut express to do anything complicated, but I digress...). Finished it, yay, cute little movie, took about an hour to do. All the video came out of my iPhoto library.
So this morning, I notice that my main drive is a little low on space so I moved my iPhoto library (following the iPhoto instructions) to my larger, external drive.
When I fired up iMovie again, it spent an hour regenerating all the video thumbnails, annoying, but dealable.
But now my project video only has the thumbnails. Every clip has a little exclamation point on it, which I assume means it can't find the video clip to back it, which is terribly frustrating since it's still in the same place in the iPhoto library, just in a different place on disk.
So is iMovie writing the absolute file location into the movie project, so if you -ever- move your iPhoto library or change your disk layout your movie becomes useless? That seems like a pretty major oversight. There doesn't seem to be any way to "re-link" the video clips to their new locations or fix this problem. Brilliant.
So I pulled out plutil, and luckily the Project file is a binary plist (scared me for a minute that it was just a binary closed data file). The file locations for the videos are referenced as such:
<string>~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals/2007/Vacation TX-1/MVI_0565.AVI</string>
So that's a -double- pain. not only is it referencing the absolute library location, it's referencing the -old- location within the library. See, I changed the name of that event in iPhoto from "Vacation TX-1" to just "Oregon Vacation", so now within the library the file's in a different spot as well.
So it seems like, unless I'm missing something, if you use a video from iPhoto you can never reorganize that video in iPhoto or change libraries? That seems like a major fix that's needed.
I'm going to try symlinking the library location to the new one, to see if as long as iMovie can find the library it can sort out the renaming. If that doesn't work, then I guess I'll be manually hacking the plist.
Am I missing an easy and obvious way to do this within iMovie?

So, adding the symlink didn't help, still missing. Upgrading to 7.0.1 didn't help.
Plist surgery did help and brought the project back to life, with one minor quirk, my thumbnails in the video editing window were gone. So the "Thumbnails" file in the bundle is a regular plist...it appears to contain the thumbnails themselves, keyed by the filename. I tried changing those paths to match as well, but that didn't do it. They are the absolute paths, with the "~" for homdir expanded. Since I left the "~" alone in the other file and just symlinked it, I wondered if maybe the resolving was different so I changed it to the absolute path of the movie file, but that didn't work either.
so I have two versions of the project, one with thumbnails but unplayable and unexportable, and another that's playable and exportable but no thumbnails. At least I didn't lose my movie.
Still crossing my fingers that I'm just missing the piece of killer-UI for finding moved video clips. Seems like if the they are switching to a video format that relies entirely on external references, including references to private paths within other programs that the user isn't even supposed to be aware of, there needs to be a tool for fixing them up.
Looking at the files, this doesn't just go for iPhoto videos...it seems also apply to stills (although since those get rendered and included in the project bundle that might not be quite as a big a deal as long as you never want to change them) and music/sound effect files.

Trying to open old iPhoto library on osx 10.9.5 with iPhoto 9.5.1. iPhoto says I must upgrade but upgrade eventually hangs. Tried to rebuild/repair database but it always says you have to upgrade database first and eventually hangs

Trying to open old iPhoto library on osx 10.9.5 with iPhoto 9.5.1. iPhoto says I must upgrade but upgrade eventually hangs. Tried to rebuild/repair database but it always says you have to upgrade database first and eventually hangs

What version was the old library made with?
What is the exact message? when it hangs does it crash or do you have to force quit?
LN

How do I move my old iPhoto library from my external hard drive to my new Mac?

Hi guys!
I recently bought a new MacBook Air as my MacBook Pro was on its last legs... I have my backup for my old MacBook Pro on an external hard drive and I'm trying to put a selection of albums from my old iPhoto onto my new MacBook Air iPhoto. I can't simply click and drag it over as I get an error message "The iPhoto library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library...". I've tried to reopen iPhoto while holding option and selecting my old iPhoto library from my external hard drive to open... AND I get the same message.
If anyone could help me out that would be amazing!
FYI: The hard drive I am using is a G|Drive mobile with Thunderbolt 1 TB.
Thank you very much in advance!
Cheers,
Kendall

I may sound like a real rookie here, but on my new MacBook Air there isn't a "Pictures" folder under "Users/kendallwilson" like there used to be on my old MacBook Pro (Early 2011). I'm still working out the new software on my MB Air, so where exactly should I open this new window to start following the steps you just provided me.
Thanks again!

How to import photos from an old iPhoto library

I have started using a new Mac (MacBook Pro Retina with OS10.10.1).
I saved my earlier iPhoto Library on my previous Mac to an external Drive. Now, if I try to open the old iPhoto Library file from my new Mac then iPhoto offers me to 'Switch Libraries' and to access pictures from the old library.
But this is not what I need. I would like to merge the old into the new (on my current Mac) and use a single iPhoto library for all pictures. In another word I would like to import content from the old library to the new and then use it as a single iPhoto library. When I try the 'iPhoto Library' files are inactive in the Finder....
Please advise steps to do do it.
Thanks

iPhoto can not merge libraries
And you must NEVER Import an iPhoto library - it does not work and creates a massive mess
To merge libraries you must either use Aperture (being phased out this year) or the paid version of iPhoto Library Manager - http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ -
Or continue to have two libraries and switch between them
LN

How can I import my old iPhoto library into my new version of iPhoto?

Just purchased new iMac and am trying to import my old iPhoto library, but keep getting Unreadable Files message. I have the library file and see that it shows up as an iPhoto Library under the Kind column.

Now that you're tried to open the correct library once see if you can perfor the following: apply the two fixes below in order as needed:
Fix #1
Launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys held down and rebuild the library.
Since only one option can be run at a time start with Option #3, followed by #4 and then #1 as needed.
Fix #2
Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library
1 - download iPhoto Library Manager and launch.
2 - click on the Add Library button, navigate to your Home/Pictures folder and select your iPhoto Library folder.
3 - Now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the File ➙ Rebuild Library menu option.
4 - In the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed.
5 - Click on the Create button.
Note: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments. However, books, calendars, cards and slideshows will be lost. The original library will be left untouched for further attempts at fixing the problem or in case the rebuilt library is not satisfactory.

I can't copy my old iPhoto library from a external HD to my new mac?

Hi. I just bought a new mac and want to have all my old iphoto pictures from my old mac into my new iPhoto library. I've tried to copy the old iPhoto library into a external HD(works fine), but the problem is that I can't copy it out from the external HD an in to my new mac again. It just say that it doesn't work because it doesnt have enough storage.
I don't get why it would say that, because the old iPhoto library is 89.55 GB and I haven't used any memory at all on my new macbook pro, and my old macbook pro has memory enough to have the iPhoto library on it (the mac is 5 years old and has almost a full memory), so why can't my new macs memory manage the iPhoto library when my old mac can? It doesn't make sense at all.
I've googled it, and it says everywhere that it should work by simply copy to external HD and move over the library from there and into the pictures folder, but this definitely doesn't work for me.
I hope that some please can help me with this, I don't know what do to.

Do you know how much space the cheapest macbook pro with reatina has?
http://www.apple.com/mac/compare/notebooks.html
A basic MBP may only have
128GB solid-state drive

Moving old iphoto library to photostream

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